← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · xmetalhead
Thread ID: 17254 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2005-03-11
2005-03-11 20:37 | User Profile
[I]The "money quote", IMO, is highlighted in blue down below.[/I]
[B][SIZE=3]It is not democracy that's on the march in the Middle East[/SIZE][/B]
Managed elections are the latest device to prop up pro-western regimes
Seumas Milne Thursday March 10, 2005 [URL=http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1434183,00.html]The Guardian[/URL]
For weeks a western chorus has been celebrating a new dawn of Middle Eastern freedom, allegedly triggered by the Iraq war. Tony Blair hailed a "ripple of change", encouraged by the US and Britain, that was bringing democracy to benighted Muslim lands.
First the Palestinians, then the Iraqis have finally had a chance to choose their leaders, it is said, courtesy of western intervention, while dictatorships such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are democratising under American pressure. And then in Lebanon, as if on cue, last month's assassination of the former prime minister triggered a wave of street protests against Syria's military presence that brought down the pro-Damascus government in short order.
At last there was a democratic "cedar revolution" to match the US-backed Ukrainian "orange revolution" and a photogenic display of people power to bolster George Bush's insistence that the region is with him. "Freedom will prevail in Lebanon", Bush declared this week, promising anti-Syrian protesters that the US is "on your side". The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, is expected to join the cheerleaders for Arab democracy in a speech today and warn the left not to defend the status quo because of anti-Americanism.
The first decisive rebuff to this fairy tale of spin was delivered in Beirut on Tuesday, when at least 500,000 - some reports said it was more like a million - demonstrators took to the streets to show solidarity with embattled Syria and reject US and European interference in Lebanon. Mobilised by Hizbullah, the Shia Islamist movement, their numbers dwarfed the nearby anti-Syrian protesters by perhaps 10 to one; and while the well-heeled Beiruti jeunesse dorée have dominated the "people power" jamboree, most of Tuesday's demonstrators came from the Shia slums and the impoverished south. Bush's response was to ignore them completely. Whatever their numbers, they were, it seems, the wrong kind of people.
But the Hizbullah rally did more than demolish the claims of national unity behind the demand for immediate Syrian withdrawal. It also exposed the rottenness at the core of what calls itself a "pro-democracy" movement in Lebanon. The anti-Syrian protests, dominated by the Christian and Druze minorities, are not in fact calling for a genuine democracy at all, but for elections under the long-established corrupt confessional carve-up, which gives the traditionally privileged Christians half the seats in parliament and means no Muslim can ever be president. As if to emphasise the point, one politician championing the anti-Syrian protests, Pierre Gemayel of the rightwing Christian Phalange party (whose militiamen famously massacred 2,000 Palestinian refugees under Israeli floodlights in Sabra and Shatila in 1982), recently complained that voting wasn't just a matter of majorities, but of the "quality" of the voters. If there were a real democratic election, Gemayel and his friends could expect to be swept aside by a Hizbullah-led government.
The neutralisation of Hizbullah, whose success in driving Israel out of Lebanon in 2000 won it enormous prestige in the Arab world, is certainly one aim of the US campaign to push Syria out of Lebanon.The US brands Hizbullah, the largest party in the Lebanese parliament and leading force among the Shia, Lebanon's largest religious group, as a terrorist organisation without serious justification. But the pressure on Syria has plenty of other motivations: its withdrawal stands to weaken one of the last independent Arab regimes, however sclerotic, open the way for a return of western and Israeli influence in Lebanon, and reduce Iran's leverage.
Ironically, Syria's original intervention in Lebanon was encouraged by the US during the civil war in 1976 partly to prevent the democratisation of the country at the expense of the Christian minority's power. Syria's presence and highhandedness has long caused resentment, even if it is not regarded as a foreign occupation by many Lebanese. But withdrawal will create a vacuum with huge potential dangers for the country's fragile peace.
[COLOR=Navy][B]What the US campaign is clearly not about is the promotion of democracy in either Lebanon or Syria, where the most plausible alternative to the Assad regime are radical Islamists. In a pronouncement which defies satire, Bush insisted on Tuesday that Syria must withdraw from Lebanon before elections due in May "for those elections to be free and fair". Why the same point does not apply to elections held in occupied Iraq - where the US has 140,000 troops patrolling the streets, compared with 14,000 Syrian soldiers in the Lebanon mountains - or in occupied Palestine, for that matter, is unexplained. And why a UN resolution calling for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon has to be complied with immediately, while those demanding an Israeli pullout from Palestinian and Syrian territory can be safely ignored for 38 years, is apparently unworthy of comment.[/B]
The claim that democracy is on the march in the Middle East is a fraud.[/COLOR] It is not democracy, but the US military, that is on the march. The Palestinian elections in January took place because of the death of Yasser Arafat - they would have taken place earlier if the US and Israel hadn't known that Arafat was certain to win them - and followed a 1996 precedent. The Iraqi elections may have looked good on TV and allowed Kurdish and Shia parties to improve their bargaining power, but millions of Iraqis were unable or unwilling to vote, key political forces were excluded, candidates' names were secret, alleged fraud widespread, the entire system designed to maintain US control and Iraqis unable to vote to end the occupation. They have no more brought democracy to Iraq than US-orchestrated elections did to south Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s. As for the cosmetic adjustments by regimes such as Egypt's and Saudi Arabia's, there is not the slightest sign that they will lead to free elections, which would be expected to bring anti-western governments to power.
What has actually taken place since 9/11 and the Iraq war is a relentless expansion of US control of the Middle East, of which the threats to Syria are a part. The Americans now have a military presence in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar - and in not one of those countries did an elected government invite them in. Of course Arabs want an end to tyrannical regimes, most of which have been supported over the years by the US, Britain and France: that is the source of much anti-western Muslim anger. The dictators remain in place by US licence, which can be revoked at any time - and managed elections are being used as another mechanism for maintaining pro-western regimes rather than spreading democracy.
Jack Straw is right about one thing: there's no happy future in the regional status quo. His government could play a crucial role in helping to promote a real programme for liberty and democracy in the Middle East: it would need to include a commitment to allow independent media such as al-Jazeera to flourish; an end to military and financial support for despots; and a withdrawal of all foreign forces from the region. Now that would herald a real dawn of freedom.
[email]s.milne@guardian.co.uk[/email]
2005-03-11 21:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=xmetalhead] [color=Navy]What the US campaign is clearly not about is the promotion of democracy in either Lebanon or Syria, where the most plausible alternative to the Assad regime are radical Islamists.[/color][/QUOTE] I was listening to NPR on my way home from work the other night (Wednesday, I think), and they were interviewing some Arab 'Middle-Eastern expert'. The interviewer asked the 'expert' if the US should not be worried about the danger of elections putting hardcore Islamists into power, and he just stated flatly- 'Oh, that is yesterday's danger. There is no danger of that anymore.' Period. End of discussion. He did not offer one scintilla of evidence to bolster his assertion. He just declared it, as if he were stating that the sky is blue. These people are totally blinded by ideology. Perhaps one day, historians will reckon this fervor for democracy as a popular delusion, like the tulip craze in Holland.
2005-03-12 01:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=xmetalhead]As if to emphasise the point, one politician championing the anti-Syrian protests, Pierre Gemayel of the rightwing Christian Phalange party (whose militiamen famously massacred 2,000 Palestinian refugees under Israeli floodlights in Sabra and Shatila in 1982), recently complained that voting wasn't just a matter of majorities, but of the "quality" of the voters.[/QUOTE]
Sounds like a man after my own heart :thumbsup:
Seriously though, what kind of fool would be in favour of genuine democracy in the Middle East when all it's going to do is bring virulently anti-Western forces to power? I don't think American (or Australian) troops should be over there in the first place, but that doesn't mean I'm obliged to give a leg up to The Enemies Of Western Civilisation™ just to oppose the neocons. That sounds rather like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
2005-03-12 02:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper] Seriously though, what kind of fool would be in favour of genuine democracy in the Middle East when all it's going to do is bring virulently anti-Western forces to power?[/QUOTE] George Bush.
[QUOTE]I don't think American (or Australian) troops should be over there in the first place, but that doesn't mean I'm obliged to give a leg up to The Enemies Of Western Civilisationâ⢠just to oppose the neocons. That sounds rather like cutting off your nose to spite your face.[/QUOTE]
The heavy and destructive hand of American and Israeli interference in the affairs of Mid East States is the reason the people there are alleged "enemies" of Western civilization.
2005-03-12 03:46 | User Profile
like the United States. A lot of people in the world, including poweful ones, are waiting for the United States to start acting like a country. I guess you paint your own picture and it becomes reality. I know I offend some on this board by saying the truth about WHY this is happenning. Human change is callous, bloddy, and relentless when it is based upon Luciferian frame of mind. So many do not understand this.
2005-03-12 04:23 | User Profile
[QUOTE=xmetalhead]George Bush. [/QUOTE]
Ok. Given the leftist source of that article, I assumed that the author believed that Bush's commitment to "democracy" was insincere.
[QUOTE=xmetalhead]The heavy and destructive hand of American and Israeli interference in the affairs of Mid East States is the reason the people there are alleged "enemies" of Western civilization.[/QUOTE]
I disagree with this. American support of Israel certainly antagonises the relationship between the Arab/Islamic and the West, but even if Israel had never come into being, Muslims would still be our enemies.
Islamic states are basically failures in need of an external scapegoat to blame for their internal problems. If it wasn't Zionism, it would be something else (most likely, they would start demanding a return of the Caliphate in order to be "equals" with the USA and the EU). The Russians have hardly been ardent supporters of Israel throughout it's history (I believe they even armed Nasser) and they are still having to deal with Muslim terrorism in Chechnya. Ditto India in Kashmir. And what about the Indonesian Muslim terrorism in East Timor and Bali against Timorese Catholics, Balinese Hindus and Australian tourists, supported financially and operationally by radical Wahabbi Arab Muslims?
You might say that these conflicts are flow-on consequences of the radicalisation of Muslims caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict, but Muslim aggression towards the Christian West predates the founding of Israel in 1945. Witness the genocide of Armenian Christians in Turkey, and the persecution of Christians in the Middle East generally. For me, supporting the Phalange in Lebanon is a no-brainer, regardless of their ties with Israel.
Come to think of it, what about all the sectarian Muslim-on-Muslim violence that occurs in practically every nation in the Muslim world? Muslims are just incurable violent basket-cases who can never, and should never be accepted as part of the civilised world. This leftist-inspired attitude of making excuses for them by playing violins about the oppression of Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis is going to do us more harm than good. Ultimately, it legitimises terrorist tactics that will only be directed at us with greater and greater frequency. Seriously man, it just makes me sick.
I disagree with the neocon colonialist approach of trying to "democratise" the Middle East, because they are hopeless savages who will revert to barbarity 5 sceonds after our backs are turned. The solution is to cut off all Muslim immigration (I'm sure you agree with me on this) and provide security against future aggression through conventional deterrence.